“Everything we see is doomed to die; to fall in love is to rather be blind.”
By choosing to adapt Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner’s dramatic opera of mythic adultery, Angélica Liddell opted for a great story of impossible love and a very direct lyrical composition. Love and death sing out of necessity, and the audience is invited to an experience of the absolute. The story of the lovers, in its musical and literary versions, is a doorway into emotion in its most primal form, between pleasure and pain. With Liebestod, or “love death,” the Spanish director explores the tragic origins of theatre, but also of corrida, and invites us to a cathartic, sacrificial, and transcendental experience. Echoing her relationship to time—“I’m not interested in the future, I’m interested in eternity”—Angélica Liddell opens her arms to the Wagnerian lovers, to hunted animals, and to toreador Juan Belmonte. Lives forever dying of intensity.
Distribution
With Angélica Liddell, Gumersindo Puche
Text, direction, stage design, costumes Angélica Liddell
Assistant direction Borja López
Lights Dennis Diels
Sound Raf Willems
Production
Production NTGent, Atra Bilis
Co-production Festival d'Avignon, Tandem Scène nationale Arras-Douai, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt)
